


(Everything’s Gonna Be) Fine, Fine, Fine

by prouvairablehulk



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: F/F, M/M, Richie Tozier Love Yourself Challenge, a what If Richie was out before chap 2 AU, this is so packed full of ocs its not even funny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:55:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22730584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairablehulk/pseuds/prouvairablehulk
Summary: In which Richie Tozier has a breakdown, gets adopted, and becomes a dad, in that order, and learns to love himself along the way.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	1. Green, But I’m Wise

“Are you - this is a genuine question I am asking, so please don’t think I’m being sarcastic or facetious or anything - but are you okay?”

The girl who is speaking is wearing a tweed skirt and a pullover sweater ill-suited to the August heat, and her forehead is creased in concern. There’s a Trader Joe’s tote bag bursting with books stamped with NYU Library in one of her hands, and a fuckoff Starbucks cup in the other. Richie, who has just stopped in the middle of the otherwise empty sidewalk in order to yell ‘fuck’ very loudly at the sky, might actually be willing to admit that her concern is warranted. He blinks at her for a minute. 

“No,” he says, finally. 

“Cool,” she says, nodding, “do you - wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this - do you wanna talk about it? Like, at all?” 

Richie contemplates this offer. She takes a sip of her coffee, and then checks an alert on the Apple Watch strapped to her wrist, and snorts inelegantly. 

“I do. Want to talk about it,” he says, finally, “but it’s - fuck, I’m bad at this.” 

She shrugs a little, and the light glints off the diamond in the cartilage piercing in her ear. 

“It’s cool, buddy. I’m on the autism spectrum and I’ve got social anxiety, manic depression and bonus PTSD, so I get it. But if you wanna give me the gist we could go from there? I’ve got time, and you exude repression energy almost as much as you ooze untapped dad energy. Just don’t tell my advisor about it yet.”

Richie laughs, and even to his own ears it’s strained. 

“Wow, you’ve got -“ his voice sticks in his throat, and he can’t make himself finish the sentence. He wants to say ‘you’ve got me pinned, haven’t you’ but even that is impossible, caught up in years of slurs and awkwardness and hiding and pain. 

“Oh,” she says, eyes widening. “Oh, shit, it’s like - actual repression energy, that’s fine, I guess.” The hand with the coffee swings in a wide arc, encompassing the Pret across the street. “Hurry up, you’ve made enough money off shitty Netflix specials that you can afford to buy me food while you talk.” 

That almost makes Richie bolt, and it must show on his face enough to make her react, her hand shooting out to grab his wrist, dropping the bag of books in the process. 

“Hey, hey -“ she says, and it’s soft, like someone soothing an animal, like something that tugs as familiar in the back of his mind. “I’m not planning on doing anything stupid or awful just because I recognize your face. Someone’s dictating how you present yourself, aren’t they? I get how much that sucks. Being in the closet for two years in Northern Virginia was pretty much the worst two years of my life, and imagining doing that for like, 30, is pretty horrific. Plus, my girlfriend is going to be so fucking smug about this.” 

Richie, who can’t believe this is his life anymore, starts crying.

The thing is this. Richie had, in fact, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to yell fuck at the sky because he’s lost control of his career. He started out delivering jokes other people wrote as a way to get his foot in the door of the big leagues, and now it’s ten years later and he’s not allowed to do anything of himself, and every press appearance is scripted within an inch of it’s life, and he’s finding himself too scared to breathe because what if someone finds out, what if someone looks at him and sees right through him and it all falls apart? And he’s got four shows in New York, and they’re all sold out, and he’s alone and lonely and wandering the city when he spots two kids - that’s what they are, they’re kids, even if they’re about 18 or so- holding hands in Washington Square Park and he wants to cry right then, looking at their bright smiles and carefree attitudes, and the fact that they are not scared, not a little, not at all. 

And then a girl on the sidewalk did see right through him, and did nothing but ask him if he wanted to talk. 

He tells her as much, sitting in the back corner of the Pret, and she holds the one hand he’d left on the table in both of hers, and then she sighs. 

“I can’t believe I told you all of this,” he says, finally. “I shouldn’t have told you any of this.” 

“It’s cool, you’re my dad now, you can tell me whatever,” she says, a wry twist to her lips. “I’m not gonna tell anyone, not until you’re cool with it. But I’ve got this glorious hot mess of a dangerous queer clique and they’ll be all over this as soon as you want a bunch of twenty-somethings to jump up and down like the fucking Doom Patrol gif yelling ‘therapy’.” 

Richie’s next half-laugh is wet.

“I hope you know this is gonna be a bit in tonight’s show,” he says, without thinking. 

“I mean, if that’s how you wanna do it then I’m all over it,” she tells him, serious. “Go for it. I have a shitty shoebox apartment and three different camping stretchers because I’m an archaeologist, and you’re my dad now.”

This last part is said with force, as though he might have forgotten it in the thirty seconds since she’d said it last. 

“Also,” she says, flipping one hand, now lifted from his, with a kind of carefree je ne sais quois, “by now Queer Archaeologists Incorporated has adopted you, and good luck getting rid of us.” 

She makes it look so easy. He wants to hate himself for how many knots he’s tied himself in, seeing her. Almost despite her easy admission of the laundry list of problems she has for herself, she’s alight with comfort. It scares him, a little. 

He leaves with her number in his phone, and every intention of burying the conversation in a haze of drink and never calling her again.

That resolution lasts until after the next show, when he’s given the revised script for the one the day after. And then he’s throwing up in his hotel room from the revulsion and the self-hatred looking at lines about the relative cool factor of claiming that you’re not straight. He calls her after his third whiskey of the night, and she picks up on the third ring. 

“I’m going out on a limb,” says Piri - that’s her name, it’s how she entered it in his phone - “and say this is the middle aged comedian with severe internalized homophobia issues I gave my number to yesterday, because no one under the age of thirty calls each other these days and the only other person of that age who has my number is saved in my phone as ‘ignore your imposter syndrome and pick up’.”

“Hi, Piri,” says Richie, and then, because he’s never been able to keep his mouth shut, he says “I think I’m about to tank my own career by throwing up when I have to make this borderline homophobic joke tomorrow and you’re the only one who knows, so I need you to help me.”

There’s a beat of silence. 

“Am I really the only one who knows?”

Richie laughs, in answer. 

“You genuinely need professional help, buddy. But listen, if you’re going to tank your whole fucking career, maybe do it in a blaze of glory?” 

Richie pours himself a new drink. 

“The fuck does that mean?” he asks, over the clink of glass on glass. 

“Maybe tell the joke and then say some shit you genuinely mean about being repressed as all fuck? I don’t know, I was only ever in the closet at school. I came home and vomited rainbows all over my living room while my parents helped me prep my applications for a Historically Gay Women’s College.” 

“Well fuck you, then,” says Richie, and hangs up. In true family fashion, she calls him back immediately. 

“Maybe consider not torturing yourself?” She says. Then she sighs. “Where’s the show and how much of my stipend is it gonna cost me to come?” 

Richie tells her. She makes a truly pained noise from the other end of the line. Then it actually registers, what she’s offering. 

“Are you coming to heckle?” he demands. 

“No, I’m coming because you clearly need help, and if I can help by cheering when you say you’re gay as fuck, if that is what you decide to do, then I’m gonna pay it forward in the world and show up and cheer when you say you’re gay as all fuck.” 

Richie tells her to wait a minute, pulls the phone from his ear, and tells his manager to have a ticket waiting at will call for someone. 

“Hold on, Piri? How many of your hot mess friends are in this city?”

“All of them? We might be gay, but we’re not stupid enough to not live in a liberal bastion.” 

“And how many is that? I’m gonna get you guys tickets.” 

“If this is an impulse thing, I’m gonna -“

“It’s absolutely an impulse thing, but I think its the best choice I’ve made in about thirty years.”

“Five,” she tells him. 

“Great. I’m telling them to give them to Piri, when you show up at Will Call, okay? If no one picks up those tickets I’m going to drink myself to death in a haze of self-hatred.” 

Richie replays that last phrase in his own head, and then adds ‘that was a joke’. 

“You’re going to kill it with a Gen-Z audience,” says Piri, “after you go to therapy. I’ll see you tonight. We’ll be the four stereotypical Sapphics and the one very obviously gay dude. I’ll be wearing three kinds of flannel. You won’t be able to miss us.” 

She hangs up on him. 

Richie might be a little in love.

“So who’s Piri?” his manager asks, five minutes before start, “because she just picked up the tickets you left at Will Call.”

“Emotional support,” says Richie, and shoves past him to the wings, barely registering the lecherous noises that he’s leaving in his wake. 

The show runs the same as it ever does, right up until he gets to the new line. He interrupts himself, halfway through delivering the line, because it’s sticking to his tongue, and it’s about time he was honest. 

“Can I get some house lights, for a minute?” he asks. “I got someone I gotta see right the fuck now.” 

“Is it your girlfriend?” yells some prick in the front row. 

“No, it’s really not,” says Richie. He’s never been more aware of the fact that there’s a camera on him during this show. 

“Not even if you paid me!” yells Piri, from where she’s now visible in the third row. Next to her, a tall redhead with a bob starts cackling. 

“Wow, ouch,” says Richie, pressing two hands over his heart, “you’ve hurt my feelings, yelling about how you’d never fuck me without specifying that you’re a lesbian and therefore it’s not about my relative attractiveness.” 

Piri laughs, and so do her friends, and they’re genuine laughs, unforced and delighted, and he feels alive in a way he hasn’t in years. 

“Alright, Piri’s non-lesbian friends, how about you guys?” 

The redhead and the brunette with the nose piercing both make exaggerated no motions, and Richie staggers as though struck. 

“Buy me a drink first!” yells the lone man in their block, grinning, in a thick Australian accent. 

Richie beams, and points at him. 

“You! Fuck, what’s the young people lingo. You’re valid! The rest of you are dead to me.” 

They laugh again. The rest of his audience seems confused. 

“Sorry, guys,” he says to the rest of the audience, ignoring his manager hissing in the wings, looking horrified, “this show stopped being about anyone but those five about a minute ago. I’d apologize, but I’m having more fun this way.”

Piri’s redhead - the girlfriend, maybe? - wolf whistles. 

“Thank you, possibly Piri’s girlfriend,” says Richie. Redhead gives him a thumbs up.

“In case this complete deviation from the script is confusing for any of you, I was supposed to make a joke about it being trendy to say you’d kiss someone of the same gender, but the thirty years of internalized homophobia wouldn’t let me.”

Piri’s hands fly up to her mouth. Her girlfriend punches the air and holds her hand out, palm up, in front of the blonde on the end. 

“For those of you who missed why that was a big deal, I’m gay,” Richie tells them. 

Piri and her friends scream loud enough that it’s still ringing in his ears after the show’s been stopped and he’s been bundled into the car by his manager. He ignores the lecture in favor of taking Piri’s advice and booking an appointment with a therapist. He feels alive, and looking at them all laughing, looking at Piri’s redheaded girlfriend with her bob, he can smell cigarette smoke and almost hear a name he didn’t remember he’d forgotten.

***

The next four months are, admittedly, some of the hardest of his remembered life. 

His manager drops him, which he expected. He doesn’t move in with Piri, because that would be weird and also she has four fucking roommates. Instead, he gets a little apartment in Tribeca and spends most of his time either at his new therapists office or on Piri and her friends couch in Columbus Circle. He starts writing for himself again, filling notebook after notebook with something that resembles a Faulkner novel more that it represents a show, but is definitely helping on the therapy front. He actively avoids social media, mostly on the recommendation of his therapist, but also because the kids tell him everything he needs to know. He binges Firefly with them, and gets a personal play through of the Witcher games from Margo - the blonde lesbian - and Marlene - Piri’s red-headed girlfriend, argues about gay fashion with Jordan, the lone boy in their group, over vodka lemonades on the fire escape at 2am. 

He moves his things over from LA, slowly covers his bare white walls with carefully preserved posters in frames, has the kids over for dinner and lets Allie, the brunette with the nose piercing and their only anthropologist, and her polaroid camera document the occasion and the kids carefully tuck the resulting photos into the frame of his bathroom mirror so that while he’s getting ready in the morning he’s confronted with their bright smiles and proof that they hugged him, that they accepted him. It reminds him of something, but he couldn’t tell you what. He puts records on the turntable he’s set up, hums to himself while he cleans, while he cooks, while he starts to live the way he’s always wanted to, on some level. 

The Faulkner novel in his notebooks starts to look like a show. 

The kids add him to their group chat. It’s called “dumpster fire” and two thirds of it is gay memes, while the other third is archaeology news and jokes that he initially finds incomprehensible, but slowly comes to understand pieces of, the longer he spends with them. Finals come around, and he starts bringing them coffee when he comes to sit on their couch and work on the show. He meets Piri’s parents just before Christmas, and ends up crying in his bathtub because they liked him, overwhelmed and scraped raw in the way his therapist keeps telling him is healing by acceptance from people with no motive for it. Piri and Marlene have a fight in the New Year (it’s over nothing, really, but they both bring up things that they know will hurt) and Piri spends 8 hours doing apology baking in his kitchen while he tries to make her laugh and they sing along to the Indigo Girls and the Smiths. 

In late January, he takes almost five months of near-daily therapy into his sixth month in New York and starts going to clubs. The kids come with him, the first time, and having them at his back gives him the courage to follow through (it doesn’t stop the hollowed-out feeling in his heart that tells him there should have been someone else). After that first one, he goes on his own, dances to a blurry mess of songs he only half recognizes and songs he half remembers dancing to in his room as a child, dances with a blurry mess of men and enjoys every moment of it - takes some of them home, goes home with some of them, from time to time. He’s listening to his therapist, taking the time to take back what he’d denied himself, and it feels good. Some nights he calls Piri from a cab or the subway at bizarre hours of the morning and they meet at a 24 hour diner by the Stonewall Inn, and they split milkshakes and pie and fries while Richie tells her about whatever had just occurred and she laughs or commiserates or just listens. 

It’s not perfect, not quite yet, but it’s close, and Richie thinks he might be genuinely happy for the first time in years. The show is almost ready. It’s just - missing something, and Richie isn’t sure what that is yet. 

He finds it in a club on a Friday night, in a man with huge doe eyes and about four inches shorter than him, who should have looked ridiculous at this club in his button down but instead just looked in charge. He calls Piri once he’s five steps outside the club and it’s clear that the man has taken off with no intent of coming back after - after whatever the revelation that just happened in the bathroom was - and tells her that she might as well round up anyone else who was awake for this one. 

It’s Piri, Margo, and Allie who are waiting for him in a booth when he arrives and collapses on to the table. 

“Well?” says Margo. 

“Well, fuck,” says Piri, “what fucking vampire did you hook up with that your neck looks like that?” 

“In breaking news,” says Richie, in a faux BBC radio voice, “it would appear that I’m a sub.” 

Piri holds her hand up for a high-five, and Richie, out of some odd, internal urge to never leave her hanging, gives her one faster than he thought possible. 

“Welcome to the club,” she says, mock-serious, before her grin cracks her face, “tell us about him, then.” 

Richie tries, even as he knows words fail him. He tells them about his big brown eyes, the smile, the laugh he’d had to earn that had been so worth it, the way he’d felt perfectly safe and at home. He doesn’t tell them about how perfectly they’d moved together, how right it felt when he’d been backed into a bathroom stall, the way he’d clung to the man, one hand in his hair, one on his back, fingers digging in as he begged. He doesn’t tell them about the frankly pitiful noise he’d made when the man had asked if he was going to be good. 

He gets the feeling his kids get the gist, though. 

“You’ve got it bad,” says Margo, although she sounds pleased about it, “what’s his name?”

“That’s where we start running into issues,” Richie tells them. 

“Start?”

“I don’t know his name, but I do know the last thing he said before he bolted out of there like I burned him was,” Richie raises his hands so he can make quote marks, “I shouldn’t have done this I’m married, what am I thinking.” 

Piri makes to get up, like she’s going to walk away from the conversation, and gets hauled back into her seat by Margo. 

“Don’t do it, baby,” says Allie, and Richie sighs and lets his forehead hit the table. 

“I think I already did it.” 

He looks up at them, and the three girls are looking at each other, obviously concerned. 

***  
Richie doesn’t see the guy again over the next three weeks, but does start pushing at some other boundaries. He finds out he likes getting tossed around, getting told what to do, likes a soft touch and heavy-handed praise. He and Piri have a no-boundaries talk about being a brat at one in the morning while they make thumbprint cookies for Valentine’s Day, Piri perched on the counter while the oven timer counts down. With the kids and his sexuality as a focal point and touchstone, the show starts really looking like a show, and he starts heading to tiny open mic nights to test out bits. Jordan, ever the social media hawk, tells him he’s become New York’s Comedy cryptid, and that there are people trying to catch his sets, trying to plot out where he might go next. Richie knows he’s still missing something to make it perfect, but at least he has a real starting point. 

He finds a new manager at the end of March - well after the bad-luck period of the Ides, which had involved the kids taking out their mid-semester stresses by stabbing the hell out of a red velvet cake bought from the ‘going stale’ section of the supermarket, because, as Richie was coming to learn, archaeology was a cult with its own bizarre rituals. His name is Steve, and he doesn’t care if Richie’s gay, he just wants him functioning enough to tell jokes and capitalize on this comeback with the right audiences. He reminds Richie of someone, although he can’t put his finger on who. Whoever it is, Steve has only the worst parts of them, and none of the kindness and affection behind the jibes that Richie half-remembers to associate with them. 

He runs into the guy again in April, when the daffodils are a bright and chipper yellow in Central Park. He wishes, in the aftermath, when he’s staring at his own dark ceiling, that he’d said no, if only so he wouldn’t have to deal with Piri’s disappointed face. He doesn’t wish that at all. The guy had found him, at the bar, pressed Richie back against it while leaning up to his ear so Richie could hear him over Britney. 

“Does it bother you?” 

Richie had arched up a little, reveling in the feel of the guys hands holding him in place. 

“That you’re married? Not half as much as the fact that I don’t know your name.”

The guy had leaned back, looked at him with those huge brown eyes, and started to smile. 

“It’s Eddie,” he’d said, and Richie knew he was a goner. Eddie had left almost as soon as they were done, but he looked sad instead of spooked this time. 

“I’ll find you,” he’d said, hand curled around Richie’s bedroom door, “and we’ll actually talk next time. You deserve that.”

Richie did deserve that, his therapist tells him at their appointment that week, and Richie found himself looking forward to the talk, the next time he saw Eddie. He waits another two weeks, and finds himself subconsciously building space for whatever the denouement of this thing between them would be into his show. He doesn’t go home with anybody, because it feels like the right thing to do. He doesn’t know how to explain the way he feels around Eddie to anyone - the way that the black hole of his forgotten childhood seems to fill up, to balance him out, the way that Eddie makes him feel safe and at peace, even in just two meetings with so few words exchanged. He tries to, with Piri, who doesn’t get it at all. 

He and Eddie end up in Richie and Piri’s usual Diner at the start of May, and Eddie tells him about his disaster of a marriage. How it started because of pressure from his mother to marry before she died, that he’d had his wife practically shoved on him - that he’d only just started going to his own therapist to deal with his own repression, how he was trying to figure out what he wanted, how terrified he was to leave given his poor health, how he knew he had to. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, when he’s done, “that’s too heavy for you, I shouldn’t burden you like that. It’s just that you-“

“Make me feel safe,” Richie finishes, in unison with him, “yeah, same here.”

Eddie reaches out across the table and grabs Richie’s hand, his eyes red with unshed tears. They stay there, in silence, just - breathing in, in the safety of each other - for another twenty minutes, before Eddie kisses him, just once, and leaves. 

Piri hates Eddie a little less, when he tells the kids, the next day at brunch in the Village. The kids, who’d had mixed feelings about the whole scenario, are much more on board with these details in play. Richie and Eddie don’t exactly meet up on a schedule, but they seem to fluctuate between desperate sex and cuddling while they watch old movies in a way that suits Richie just fine, the casual intimacy of Eddie on his couch, pressed against his side, just as pleasant, just as revolutionary. Eddie’s something else, all energy and joyous aggression tempered by fondness, something wild and free in the way that the city seems to foster, a fire in a barrel just waiting for a molotov. He hasn’t made a move to leave his wife, who sounds like a bigger bitch with every story Eddie tells about her, but Richie hopes that he actually will, one day, because the Eddie-shaped void in his apartment on the nights when Eddie isn’t there is starting to become tinged with feelings in a way Richie knows he can’t stop, and knows even better will hurt when (if, says an optimistic voice in his head that sounds like Jordan) Eddie leaves for good.

It’s Marlene who drops the last piece in play, sometime towards the end of the month. Richie texts the group chat one night to say that Eddie’s over and none of them should drop by, as has become their practice, and Marlene responds by saying ‘have fun with our currently married future step dad’. Eddie ends up taking a nap with his head on Richie’s shoulder, relaxed, for once, the feral asshole, while Richie writes, furious, filling in the blanks he’d been leaving for just this missing detail. Marlene gets the draft first, as a result. She reads it on the fire escape of the kids’ place, on the first of June, the massive Pride flag the kids hung every year folded under her knees, and she laughs until she cries. He does a semi-performance for the kids over dinner that night, delighted with their reactions, with sending Piri into hysterics that leave her with cramps, with the way Margo throws her head back when she laughs, with Allie and Jordan propping each other up as they heave in air. It’s the same rush he had when he performed for them last August, but stronger, more real, more alive. He gives it to Eddie, next, to make sure it’s okay, and Eddie tears up for other reasons even as he’s laughing, gives Richie the all clear, kisses him, tells him he’ll watch it as many times as he can. 

“I can’t wait until I’m brave enough to meet them,” he tells Richie, “your Trashmouth Troupe.” 

Richie has to kiss him for that, and then changes the name of the group chat immediately. ‘I don’t take criticisms. Your Daddy suggested it’, he texts them, and the emoji responses he gets leave him and Eddie both wheezing messes in the middle of Richie’s California King. 

Steve books him a venue for the end of the month. Marlene and Piri, over for dinner and staying the night because the commute from Richie’s place to their internships at the Museum of Natural History and the Met, respectively, was much easier, talk him down from a panic attack after he gets the call. He sees his therapist the next day, and she reminds him of how big a step he’s taking in the warm, grandmotherly way she has, and Richie takes deep breaths on her couch and tells her he deserves to be both himself and happy, and means it for the first time in a year. 

Steve hates the name. Richie puts his foot down, and designs the merch himself, without running it by Steve first. He opens the first box at the Troupe’s place, all of them drunk on box wine and New York City summer and the sound of disco that filters through the pavement when it’s Pride. 

“Whaddaya think?” Richie asks, after he’s passed them all shirts, bouncing his eyebrows as ridiculously as he can manage. 

“I don’t know,” says Piri, shirt pressed to her chest, “I think I’m A Bottom might have been more nuanced.”

Richie starts cackling, even as Jordan, already wearing the “Trashmouth Tozier: Yes Daddy Tour” tank top Richie had thrown him, throws a pillow at her face. 

“We love it,” Margo tells him, beaming, “and we’re so proud of you.” 

“We are,” says Piri, coming over to wrap her arms around his waist loosely, “we really love you, Pops.” 

They end the night in a pile on the couch, watching Priscilla and all still shaky with the tears Piri’s statement had brought on. Richie thinks that this was what he’d been waiting for, the whole time he’d been feeling empty, and wishes that Eddie was there too. 

The Troupe is there, front row opening night, a reflection of their value in Richie’s life. Eddie comes on night three, sneaking into Richie’s dressing room and panting his praises around kisses. Piri’s parents are there night six, and the smudges of eyeliner around her mother’s eyes as she drags Richie into a hug make his night. Night twelve is the night that the Troupe comes back, this time with a cork board covered in clippings of positive reviews and printed tweets showing love and support, carefully attaching it to the back of his door with command strips. Night fifteen, the only person in his dressing room is Steve, but he’s holding a Netflix contract in shaking fingers. 

A year to the day that he was all but dragged off-stage by his manager for coming out, Richie Tozier waits in the wings of the same theatre, waiting to start a show. In those same third row center seats, the Troupe sit, all dressed to the nines, ready to cheer him on. There’s already a camera pointed at him. 

Richie Tozier takes a deep breath, and walks on stage.


	2. Brave, But I’m Chicken Shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quick shoutout to the person who tagged their bookmark of this with a version of the Reddie hookup plot line that was in my initial outline for this fic and I almost used

Transcript Excerpts from Richie Tozier: Yes Daddy, a Netflix Comedy Special

“So the other night I ended up face down on my adoptive daughter’s couch at three am while she judged me real hard for my life choices. Or, to put it differently, it was three in the morning and I made ‘I have been recently fucked into incoherence by my married sort-of-boyfriend-but-definitely-regular-hookup’ noises at a happily U-Hauled lesbian while she sighed and came up with a plan to sort my shit out, which I now know is a very nearly universal gay experience. The lesbian sorting your shit out part, not the first part. God bless Bob the Drag Queen for that ‘designed by lesbians so you know it works’ gif. I think my manager might actually strangle me for how many times I’ve sent that to him as the whole text of an email.”

“I have five kids now - don’t look impressed, the youngest is 21 and they adopted me more than the other way around - and I love them dearly. Two of them are lesbians, one’s gay, and two are bi, and they’ve spent the last 12 months alternating between shoving me off their couch with a broom when I get too mopey and teaching me how to be gay. Between the five of them and my therapist, I might actually be close to liking myself these days.”

“So now I’m not in the closet my tiny child gay yodas keep teaching me about Gay Culture™️ - and yes, they say it like that every time - and let me tell you you do not understand true power until you’ve ordered an ice coffee while it’s snowing with the understanding that every gay person knows that you are also gay. The first time I locked my keys in the car after coming out and then said “that’s homophobic” they pooled their shitty grad student stipends to buy me champagne. I love them so much”

“Piri calls me a disaster gay about four times a day on twitter and she has yet to be wrong. At first I thought she had an uncanny knack for guessing when I’d made a stupid decision but now I understand it’s because all lesbians are constructed with the inherent ability to know when you’re about to fuck up. I like to think there’s a little siren in her head like something off Star Trek - woooooop wooooooooop Richies being an idiot. [pause for laughter] What’s ironic is that I have a better sense of when she’s being hit on than she does and so where she calls me out on twitter for being stupid, I get to swoop in like a middle aged avenging angel to say that girl was hitting on you, Piri, you dumbass lesbian.”

“Also the fact that if I yell ‘Harold’ they all know exactly what I mean. I love it. Secret codes! I yelled ‘Harold’ in a coffee shop the other day and all four of my sapphic kids yelled back ‘stop trying to set us up, Richie’. They say you turn into your parents, and it’s true. I now spend my evenings clucking over the three children of mine not in long term relationships like the good Jewish mother I was apparently destined to be.”

“Piri made me watch Black Sails the other day and now all pirates are gay and I hate England. It’s just how it is. Also it drives home the unavoidable truth that gay women are uniformly better than you. And before you ask, yes, Toby Stephens could *get it*. Also I will now cry if anyone says the phrase know no shame, because I am, ultimately, soft, and also gay.”

“On the one hand, I adore my tiny child gay yodas for guiding me out of the closet with such class, but on the other hand, I have a newfound appreciation for the pain my teenaged self caused everyone I encountered. Piri and Margo woke me up at 3am once because they’d lost all track of time writing papers and were screaming along to some Wombats song in the kitchen. Allie is incapable of going more than five hours without yelling “love shack” in the style of the B-52s song.”

“I always thought I sat weird because I never really figured out what to do with all this bonus limb after my growth spurt at age 15, but no, it’s just that I’m gay, and gays can’t sit normally. You should see my kids - either there’s about four of them on one chair or one of them takes up three chairs. There is nothing in between except about five limbs because they all steal each other’s space because they like touching all the time. There’s nothing more gay than sitting in a bizarre fashion while advertising how touch starved you are.”

“But to come back to the line of that opening monologue I know you all fixated on - [extended applause break, during which Tozier takes several dramatic bows] - thank you, thank you - coming back to that, and also the title of this show, because the two are very much related, I do indeed currently have a significant other! Sort of. The kids refer to him as ‘our currently married future step-dad’ in our group chat, which is just the perfect example of modern family morality, isn’t it? But yes, I can tack ‘side piece’ onto my sparkling new list of titles, right under ‘gay’, because my current significant other is married. I know, listen to all those gasps. It works for us, okay? Don’t be so judgmental. He gets to ease his way into telling his frankly awful wife to get lost, and I get to be emotional about the fact that the dick is so good I only care a little bit that he’s left me alone in peace. He’s the Daddy in the show title, by the way, not me. Well, also me, a little, but my kids call me Pops for precisely this reason.” 

***  
Them: Meet our cover stars, the Trashmouth Troupe  
***  
Piri Hamilton (-Tozier) @moocultenthusiast   
I have experienced no greater joy in life than watching @trashmouth ‘s face upon hearing and seeing Matthew Mercer as Shaun Gilmore for the first time. (Also he’s a disaster gay. Richie, not Gilmore.)

***  
Transcript: 8 Minutes and 17 Seconds of Richie Tozier Being An Icon On BFQOE

Jimmy Carr: Richie, what was school like for you?  
Richie Tozier, with an utterly blank expression: I have post traumatic amnesia and my parents are dead and therefore unable to enlighten me, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say awful.   
JC: you have amnesia about your childhood?  
RT, now making half-hearted jazz hands: Repression central!  
[cut to Sandy Toksvig, Richie’s teammate, who is laughing]  
*  
JC: What are you doing?  
ST, unpacking a picnic hamper: We’re celebrating getting handjobs into the show.  
JC: I don’t think -  
RT, interrupting: Hey! Don’t mess with a lesbian with a plan! Especially when that plan involves alcohol!  
*  
[A super cut of Richie saying the phrase ‘handjobs’ seven times, each one accompanied by finger guns]  
*  
JC: Sandy, Richie, what do ‘Bread of Heaven’, ‘Go West’, and ‘Seven Nation Army’ have in common?  
RT: Gay. They’re all gay.   
*  
RT: I’m GAY, you think I watch football for the fan chants? [what follows can only be described as a verbal keysmash]  
*  
RT, pointing at someone off screen: Do it, and I’ll seduce your father.  
*  
RT, doing the Will Smith gesture at ST: Lesbians! The backbone of the movement.  
*  
JC: How do you know that?  
RT, mortified: I have five twenty-something kids.  
*  
RT, chin propped on his folded hands, grinning broadly: Somewhere, Piri Hamilton just got the urge to tweet ‘Richie’s being a disaster gay again’ and she’s only going to find out why when she sees this.

***

Read Online: “The King of Narnia: Richie Tozier on Closet Doors, Cool Coats, and How His Kids Saved His Life”, in The Advocate

***

OUT Magazine: If we weren’t already a little in love with Richie Tozier, we are now. [Attached video description: Richie Tozier, in a well-tailored suit worn over a Freddie Mercury t-shirt, is standing in the middle of an arcade-turned-shooting set. This is behind the scenes footage from his Advocate photo shoot, and he’s laughing at something someone just out of view has said. Vaguely, in the distance, Eddie Money’s ‘Take Me Home Tonight’ starts playing. Tozier makes the universal gesture for ‘turn it up’, and pulls someone into shot. It’s Piri Hamilton, one of the Trashmouth Troupe. She’s wearing a vintage, early years Trashmouth Tozier shirt tucked in to an elegant, ruffled skirt. Tozier spins her around to the music while she laughs, and then hands her off to Marlene Knight, who has come in to view, wearing houndstooth pants and a Trashmouth shirt. Tozier hauls Jordan Dion into the shot, dipping him dramatically while the younger man cackles with laughter, flashes of skin visible through his artfully ripped jeans. Allie Jones, in a linen jumpsuit under an old bowling jacket with Tozier’s name on the back, flings her arms around Tozier from behind, right as Margo England, overalls half-fastened over a Trashmouth hoodie, crashes into him from the front. All six of them can be heard singing along with the chorus when it starts, dancing together in the middle of the shot like fools. Tozier is grinning, wide and genuine, when the video cuts out.] 

***  
Watch Now On Buzzfeed: The Trashmouth Troupe School Us On Queer Trivia

***  
Richie Tozier Adopt Me Challenge @tooziers   
Is anyone else feeling personally attacked by Piri doing the John Adams Rap on Seth Meyers last night? Because I am. [Attached gif: Piri Hamilton, looking impeccable in a sky blue jumpsuit, winking over the mic in her left hand. It’s captioned with the line she’s delivering from the cut Adams Administration rap from Hamilton: ‘the line is behind me I crossed it again’. Visible on the couch behind her is a proud-seeming Richie Tozier.]

Marlene Knight @poppopbaby  
Replying to @tooziers ME. I FEEL ATTACKED

***  
Video Transcript: Teen Vogue: Twenty Questions with Richie Tozier and the Trashmouth Troupe 

***  
Best Moments from the WIRED Autocorrect Interview: Richie Tozier and the Trashmouth Troupe

[image description: a ten gif set. The first gif shows Richie Tozier, mock-cowering as the five members of the Trashmouth Troupe pelt him with paper. The second is the intro; the captions show that the five kids are saying ‘we’re comedian Richie Tozier’ and then Tozier himself saying ‘and I’m gay icons the Trashmouth Troupe’. The third and fourth are two parts of the same moment; the third shows Richie reading off the board that Jordan is holding - the caption shows him as reading ‘does Richie Tozier have a boyfriend?’. The fourth is Tozier looking straight at the camera, and is captioned ‘yes, and he’s five nothing and a spitfire bitch and I adore him’. The fifth is Margo, with her hand over Piri’s mouth, half-yelling ‘she’s a cow cult leader don’t listen to her’, followed by Piri pulling her hand away and yelling back ‘I study Roman Cult Religions’. The sixth is Allie, tiredly shaking her head and saying ‘none of us dig up dinosaurs’. Seven and Eight are another two part scene; seven shows Tozier mimicking someone reading a children’s book and saying ‘what does the archaeologist say?’; eight is all five of the kids yelling ‘where’s the fucking levels register’ at top volume. Nine is Tozier saying ‘the next one better be Richie Tozier shirtless’. Ten is Marlene throwing a board over her shoulder while saying, deadpan, ‘yeet’.]

***  
Allie Jones @givemeyourbones  
To my Anthropology 101 lab session: if any of you ask why I’m wearing Trashmouth merch today the only response you’re getting is ‘I can’t read suddenly I don’t know’ unless you’re buying me coffee for the rest of the semester

***  
Richie ‘Dad Energy’ Tozier @trashmouth  
(I carry it in my heart) [attached image description: a cluster of wrists, belonging to the Trashmouth Troupe and Richie Tozier, all tattooed with the word “coepiam” (let me begin) in a cursive font]

***

TMZ @TMZ  
Richie Tozier throws up on stage and then vanishes from show without explanation. 

Margo England @swordlesbian  
Replying to @TMZ HE DID FUCKING WHAT


End file.
